Alyssa walked into the Entrance Hall. She knew that she needed to start taking smaller steps, because she always ended up way ahead of the others. That was something that she needed to keep an eye on. But for now, she blamed her eagerness to see what the other House students had come up with, as the reason why she had arrived at the Entrance Hall first.

Alyssa was getting excited. All of them were now a step closer to solving the mystery as to who had taken the trophies. Until they knew who it was, she just couldn't believe that someone would have stolen them. Maybe someone had just 'borrowed' them to show it off to their friends.

One thing did bother her was the fact that none of the school staff seemed too overly concerned about their disappearance. Was that another clue?

'I guess we'll find out soon enough.' Alyssa thought to herself as she looked around and she waited for the others to join her.

Laura looked around to see who was already here, when she saw Alyssa she smiled and went and stood next to her, now all she had to do was wait for the others and hopefully then they could get to the bottom of what was going on.

Marching was hard worked which was why she gave up half way and decided to go back to walking like a Detective. Their way of getting around was much easier and required far less foot movement in anyone time. It was a good thing Vivi wasn't a Puffer or she'd have to pretend to be hard working which meant no complaining about the STAIRS she had to CLIMB back up to the ground floor. Whoever had the trophies had better know how to run fast if they found him/her/it/who cared???because she was gonna deck 'em for all her HARD WORK.

By the time she got to the Great Hall the half a smile she'd managed to maintain throughout the entire march was gone. It figures the Puffers would have beat them here and of all the Puffers Laura had to be there too. How disappointing. She gave a general scowl in her direction, not to start anything but because she didn't know where she stood with the girl. One second she was offering her candy and smiling then the next she was being rude. The girl was weird and Lex didn't have the time to figure her out; not with this super cool mystery going on.

Next she looked to the other puffer that was there, Alyssa. A much nicer girl. "Hey Alyssa!" BEAM. She looked around. Where was anybody else...?

"Are the other puffers coming soon?" They might have been like the lions who refused to run ahead but sugar was good and it was keeping her going so she got to be different OKAY?? When she thought about it...they were the only ones there...

Yeah...the others would be there soon. They had to...they had the other clue...

Alyssa smiled when she saw Alexa enter the Entrance hall and join both Laura and her. That meant that the other students would soon be arriving.

"Hi Lex. Yes the others are actually on their way here too. I just walk too fast and my strides are long. I'm surprised Laura was able to catch up with me." Alyssa smiled over at the younger badger.

"So the fact that you're here, most likely means that your house got your final puzzle too and came up with the same conclusion that we did. To meet up here, share what we each found and combine our efforts to solve the final piece of the puzzle." Those Lions had a pretty smart bunch of students too.

Sierra finally made her way off the last stair and stepped into the Entrance Hall. She'd climbed all the way down from the Astronomy Tower, and although she wasn't worn out, she was extra annoyed now. This thief was just leading them on a wild goose chase, and all the while, he or she was probably hiding in the shadows laughing their head off.

She turned the corner, half expecting to see the trophies just sitting there with the culprit standing in their midst. Instead, she was greeted with a room full of...Puffers?! So this is what she got from all her hard work?! The thief brought her to a room full of Puffers?! Oh, and one Gryffindor.

What luck...

"So I'm guessing you guys are following clues, too?" she asked them.

The minute people started moving, mainly her Prefect, Peyton followed them out. She wasn't too grumpy about the stairs this way around cos it was downhill and she didn't mind it as much as uphill. She had even hopped the last steps down, her bat still in her possession.

She caught up with Sierra and stood next to her, STARING at the people in front of her. Hufflepuffs. What were they doing here? Still searching for their gold? Weren't they supposed to be good finders and all that? Apparently, not.

Peyton glanced up at Sierra. Oooh, so...the clues might have led everyone here. School unity perhaps? Hmm. Clever. She glanced around and thought out loud, "No Ravenclaws?"

Oh, wait!

There was Lex and Laura! "Hi, Lex! Hi Laura!" she beamed with a high, finger-y wave.

She arrived a few minutes after the older girl at the Entrance hall and looked at the older girl whose name was Sierra and waited a few steps behind her. She had really no idea what they needed to do now and she hoped that nobody would ask her about her opinion. But when she looked around her and saw that the hall was filled with students she sighed. “Maybe are they hiding our trophy’s” muttered Sonea and looked suspiciously at the other students.

“Watch them all” said Sonea to Little princess and placed her rat on her shoulder. She didn’t thought that the trophy’s were here in this room because there were too much people, one of them would already have found them if they were here. She wondered if they would find more parchments with another riddle written on it.

Oakey walked down the stairs and gathered with the rest of the group that was forming in the Entrance Hall. So far it seemed to just be the Snakes, and his house plus Alexa Cambridge. "They aren't." Oakey said to the little first year Slytherin with the weird pink rat on her shoulder. In fact Alyssa, and Laura were supposed to head down with the group. At least they were eager to find out who took the Trophies. "They're with me, no need to be so watchful."

Now to head over to those two. "You two are really quick. Have you spotted anything here yet? Any sign of the Trophies?" Alyssa, and Laura both were able to find the second clue in the kitchen so maybe they found something here before he arrived.

Alyssa's heart began to beat a little faster when more students began to arrive. Sierra and two Slytherins arrived and so did Oakey. This was good because the appearance of more students from the other houses meant that they were closer to finding the trophies.

"Hi Sierra. Yes we're following the clues too and I'm guessing you guys were told to come meet up with the rest of us here." Alyssa told Sierra while waiting for Oakey to join both Laura and her.

The moment he did, Alyssa leaned over to whisper in Oakey's ear, "No there's no sign of the trophies here but I don't think we're supposed to find them here. The last clue said that each of the house's had a word and that we're supposed to combine the words which will lead us to another part of the clue or maybe the hiding place of the trophies. Our letters form the word TO. I'm betting that the others have found letters that form other words too."

Speaking aloud to everyone, "I wonder where the Claws are? I'm sure they must have found the final clue by now. From what our last clue said, we're all supposed to work together to solve the final puzzle."

Christmas arrived at the entrance hall and saw Alexa had already arrived and there were several other students from other houses there as well and stood quietly beside Alexa

Milton was at the front of the Ravenclaw invasion group of students. He had been jogging, but he slowed to a stop when he came upon some puffers and lions, along with Sierra and some other Slytherin he didn't know. "Do you still have your clues?" he asked, lifting his up. He just had the first one from the trophy room. Dustin and Eliza had the other two.

It bothered Alice that so many other people were here. Why WERE they here? Clutching tightly to the first clue from the trophy room, she gravitated to her other Gryffindors. Lex had one clue and Melanie had the other, right? "Why are there others here?" She glanced around in confusion, her eyes flicked to each face before landing on her lions again. "OUR clue lead to here. Maybe they're all lost." They could help point them in the right direction, maybe, but it was the GRYFFINDORS who were supposed to be there.

Right?

".. what if they took our next clue?" THOSE THIEVING SLYTHERINS. Hadn't it been a Slytherin that stole Selina's bat? Or the Hufflepuffs! It was THEM. "Why are you all here?" There were Puffers and Slytherins.. even a handful of Ravenclaws. She didn't know WHY, though.

See? It was things like this that had her thinking. Puffers were always so eager to do stuff. She was eager too but not to get stuff done. Nope. It was more to know the 'how's and 'why's of stuff which was what she was really looking for in this whole mystery. The 'who' was kinda important too but not really. That person still needed to get what was coming to them.

She nodded briefly at her question. "We did. It said to look for you guys as we figured we'd run into you guys up here." She looked around. She was actually expecting to see the Claws here first but that obviously wasn't how things were working out. Maybe they got lost...? "You guys were on a wild goose chase too, yes?" At least now she knew they weren't the only ones being given the run around. She felt better now.



HEY LOOK THE SNAKES!

Yet another house that had arrived before Ravenclaw. She was beginning to think the lot of them might really have been lost or something. "Uh-huh." To answer her questions. "Took us as far down as the dungeons before making us come back up." And the question asked by the Slytherin Prefect told her that the snakes had also been playing detective--just not as good as she was because she was being Detective!Vivi and that made all the difference in the world. Duh.

"What letter do you guys have?" Juuuust curious. They all had a letter on their parchment...didn't they...? Or was it only them...?



And Peyton was here too! Lex grinned over at her. "HAI!" So these were the snakes who were first on the scene. Most of them were probably just lagging behind, too lazy to do much else. If the clues took them all over then it would have taken them too and she didn't see them as the type to like all the extra exercise.

"I'm surprized I haven't seen any Claws either. Pffft and to think they're supposed to be the smart ones." They most likely still were but she just wanted to take this moment while she could and actually, she was now very amused because the thought of the Claws trudging around was kinda funny. They didn't strike her as hard working either.



Then there was a voice she didn't know. She turned and saw a girl...first year maybe saying something about them taking the trophies. If she wasn't already amused by all this stuff happening she would have been offended. How ruuuude. "We did not." Yeah, even though Oakey had spoken up she felt the need to say it herself. "We're looking for clues too." Then she stuck her hand in her pocket and pulled out the Parchment she had found. "See?"

"I'll be watching you though." Because she liked watching things but also because the girl was thinking up theories and those never ended well. She wanted to see the disaster coming before it got there thank you very much.



Then Christmas got there. Lex beamed at her when she stood next to her. "Glad you could finally make it." She teased. "I think we just needed the Claws to get here then we can..." But she trailed off as the first Ravenclaw student showed up.



Dear sweet MERLIN! no wonder they all took so long to get there! Just look who they had heading the whole thing. Lex shook her head. It was a pity when all the brains had graduated from a house--especially a house meant to be smart--and left them with mindless idiots like the Ravvie Quidditch Captain. See, this is why Vivi shouldn't have left. More head shaking.

"Took you long enough to get here?" What'd you do? Forget how to read?



Blink. Blink. O.O

She looked over at Alice who had joined them by now when she went off about the others stealing their clue. Ummmm...well that wasn't exactly how it went..."Alice...the parchment told us to go looking for them and I'm guessing their parchments told them to do the same thing as well." Why else would they all end up here? Coincidences happened but not so often. Not really anyway.

She looked at everyone present before turning her attention to her fully again. "I think we might need to their clues so we'll have to be nice or something." She couldn't resist the face she made after saying that.

The blonde had made her way from the library to the entrance hall slowly, knowing they'd need to wait for the other houses to show up before they could put together all their clues. No use rushing if they were going to be waiting on people, yeah? Yeah.

Too many people. There were just too many people here and Ella knew that there was going to be some butting of heads. That was always the way with strong personalities, yeah? Everyone wanted to be the leader. The blonde frowned slightly at the thought of possible arguing and took a seat on the staircase, flipping through her notepad.

Time for some doodling? Yes, Siree.

This time they didn't have to climb as many stairs to get to the next destination, but Penelope still didn't feel the need to rush there as fast as possible like a couple others seemed to want to. They apparently needed the other houses' help to continue this search, and who knew how many stairs they all had to go down to get to the Entrance Hall too, so no need to rush really. But it seemed quite a few of the others were already there when she reached it. Well, that was good. Now she didn't have to wait.

She would've gotten into the thick of the group to help figure out what they were all supposed to do, but she noticed Ella sitting on the nearby staircase, not participating with the rest. So she decided to go over there instead.

"Hey Ella," the third year said, offering a smile as she sat beside the older girl. "You not gonna help with the clues?" Or whatever everyone was doing over there besides talking.

Alyssa watched as more students showed up, including some Ravenclaws. 'Good we have representatives from each house here. Now we're getting somewhere.' she thought to herself wondering where her other house mates were.

She looked at Alice as she asked why they were all there. "Well the last clue told us to be here and we all interpreted it as saying that we needed to share our clues with the rest of you and combine all our efforts in order to find the next clue. So that's why we're here." Alyssa explained to Alice.

Then she turned back to the some of the others who seemed to be suspicious of each other. "Hey look, none of us stole the trophies. If we did, would we be helping to look for it? I know that it's hard but we need to stop suspecting each other and start working on figuring out the next part of the clue. We are ready to share our piece of the puzzle. Is anyone else going to do the same?" Alyssa asked the other house members.

She looked at Oakey. "It's all yours dude."

Sky had followed her prefect and housemates down to the Entrance Hall, of course. Only, what she expected to see wasn't what she saw. At all. Nope, instead of the trophies it was two of the other houses. Er..... bunch of Hufflepuffs and a Gryffindor, anyway. So, what? Were they supposed to team up with the other houses now? And where were the Ravenclaws? Had they just decided this whole thing was pointless and gone back to their common room?

One thing she knew though. She was going to let Sierra question the other houses. She seemed to be better at it than herself.

Based on his fellow housemates' explanation, this long clue-riddle would lead them to the entrance hall. The Head Boy then quickly moved to the next location and he already saw some Hufflepuffs, the Ravenclaw captain, Gryffindors and of course, his fellow Slytherins.

Gary was still thinking about the letters from the parchment. The last clue had the big H on it, while the first and the second one had U and T. Huh, what did it mean? "Do you also get the letters?" He asked to the others

She got left behind again. Meh. But not this time, for here she was running just a little bit behind their Captain. How she was able to catch up was beyond self explanation for when she arrived at the Whomping Willow, her housemates were gone, but she saw the note and followed what was written on it. Smart move, that note.

When he stopped, she did too and that's when she noticed the crowd.

They were ALL here. Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws and Slytherins. Hmm.........

Beezus edged closer to Milton. "I think this where the "No longer can you do this alone, You need some others to get into the zone." part of the last clue comes in?" She suggested.

Hiiiiiiiiiii Sierra.

"We did! It looks like we have to work altogether from now on." She told the she-snake.

Then Alyssa spoke up.

Suspecting each other? Really? So far, her eagles haven't been throwing suspicious looks at each other. Nope, they all trusted each other. "I don't think any of us here..." She send glances to each one of them present there. "...would take the trophies. It's school property so hiding them would basically mean a date with Professor Lafay at the dungeons. So, I agree with Lyssie."

Biting her bottom lip, she said...""A word you all hold and when later combined will give the location you must find," the Ravenclaws had that passage on our last clue. So..." The brunnete's forehead creased as she began thinking. A word? A word that each of them had? Each house was holding?

The further they walked, the more Mo was sure that the clue was actually leading them to the Great Hall. It said first two doors and then another and it talked about what was obviously FOOD. That was the Great Hall. Only, as soon as they made it into the Entrance Hall, everyone was there.

They'd all been fooled by the clue. It must be so hard not to be smart as a Ravenclaw.

"Our word is THE," Mo announced as he nearly ran right over Beezus in his haste to report on their findings. People were talking about sharing their words, right? And their word was obviously THE. "What other words are there?"

Kendall needed another truffle. Not because she figured that there were going to be more parchment riddles showing up that would need solving, but because she just needed it after the jog back to the Entrance Hall from all the way out at the Willow. She still had a feeling that at least some of their group thought the clue had been directing them toward the Great Hall, but she’d decided to stay quiet about it all. Especially when there were people from all the other houses gathering in the Entrance Hall, like she and Milton had said. Plus, Beezus had rejoined them, so she stepped up by her friend as she popped another truffle into her mouth. Friends and chocolate, so that should hold her over until this little search party thing was over with and the trophies were found.

She’d given Alexa a look as the little Gryffindor had spoken, along with their Quidditch captain, though. “We were all the way out at the Willow,” she corrected. “You can’t expect us to get here at the same time as people that were already inside the castle.” She was just frustrated at all the running, and having to think, and not getting any of the clues herself, and the truffle hadn’t worked quite yet. She’d glanced over at Mo as he’d piped up with the letters they’d gotten with their clues, too. “Well, we got a T, an H, and an E. Could be THE, or could be part of lots of other words. What’d everyone else get?” Like Beezus had said. Their clue had said that they ALL had a word, so it probably was like an anagram or something. Therfore, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to just assume that they had a word all by themselves, especially if there were people who thought the Claws shouldn’t be there.

She was still looking suspicious around her when somebody spoke to her and told her that everyone was looking her for the same thing, the trophy’s. A few minutes later gain she saw a student from a other house and the girl showed her a parchment who was different than the ones she had saw in the hands from her own housemates. And this girl again said her that everyone here was searching for the trophy’s. But she was not sure if she could believe the students who were talking to her, one of them was a student from Hufflepuff and the other student was from Gryffindor, and because she was still new here on Hogwarts and didn’t knew much students from the other houses, she remained cautious till some of the students from HER house were telling her that she didn’t needed to be suspicious. She could trust the students from her own house, she was sure of that!

But if she stayed here, away from the others she could not hear what was going on and she decided to stay closer to her housemates. It was not difficult for her to find the Snakes here in this room, they were probably the only worthy people in this room and concentrated on what they were saying. “T-H-U” mumbled Sonea and thought about what those letters could mean. “Do we knew what the letters are from the other houses?”

Now this was just tiring ok. They practically went from east to west....not odessa but west the direction. Anyway, she now was pretty ticked off at whoever set this up. Why not place all the clues at the same place and like on the same parchment. The snake dragged her feet down from the observatory which was a loong walk!

Following her house-mates she noticed that they had gone ahead of her while she was shuffling. Ehh...She got tired ok. Picking up her pace, Cassia made it to the entrance hall kinda panting. She paused sucking in breath then she walked further in and she blinked..

Woow..A lot of srudents..

She searched the faces and smiled at whom she liked, ignored the one she didn't like and looked for her friends. OH LOOKIT IT'S LEX. Cassia waved enthusiastically at her bestie. "Hey Lexa," She called over. The trophies can wait she had to greet her lioness first.

Paying attention to what the students were talking about, Cassia picked up a couple of words and processed them. It was obvious that the other houses had been solving clues and moving from place to another as well.

"Umm...We got T-H-U..Maybe it's some kind of a message. " She said looking at the faces around her. "Could it be HUT..Or UHT" But 'thu' and 'uht' meant nothing. Not that hut meant a lot but it IS a word at least.

What did the other houses get again? She tried picking up some words since it was like chaos here. But in a good way.

Really? Accusing each other of taking the trophies was kind of silly, yeah? Ella shook her head and continued doodling the Quidditch Cup. That was until someone joined her.

"Hi Penelope," the fifteen year old replied, smiling back. She shrugged at the question, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "I just figured I'd wait until everyone arrived, is all. Besides, I don't like trying to talk over people. It seems a bit silly." And she looked over at the mass of students now crowded around.

"Looks like someone from each house is here now. Want to go see what they've found?" And she she smiled a little, standing up. She was quite curious to see what other words had been uncovered.

...

THE and HUT? Hmmm..."We found TO..." BLINK. "What if...What if it's Professor Newlin's office? That could be described as sort of a hut, yeah?"